Category Archives: Business News

By Jill Nagy
Moby Rick’s Seafood has moved its Saratoga Springs business to 26 Congress St., in Congress Plaza.
The new shop opened just after Christmas.
The old location, a blue and white clapboard building at 173 Lake Ave. in Saratoga Springs, was demolished. It is owned by Richard Lofstad.
The business had been at the Lake Avenue location for eight years, the last of a series of tenants dating back to 1891.
Moby Rick’s sells fresh fish and seafood sourced on Long Island and in Boston, along with prepared entrees available for takeout.
Earlier in 2020, Lofstad opened a location at 22 Clifton Country Road in Clifton Park.

By Christine Graf
Free Form Fibers, a Saratoga Spring high-tech company in the Grande Industrial Park, completed raising a $2.5 million in November that will be used to further its development.
Free Form Fibers utilizes advanced technology to create high-performance ceramic fibers that are used to make durable parts for the aviation and nuclear industries. The fibers are approximately 1/4 the diameter of a human hair.
The majority of the $2.5 million that was raised will be used to build the three production tools necessary to produce ceramic fibers. The tools should be up and running by the end of March. Without them, the company can only provide lab-sized samples to potential customers for evaluation.
The company anticipates that their fibers will be used in the LEAP commercial aircraft engine, an engine developed through a partnership between GE Aviation and Safran Aircraft Engines. LEAP engines operate with a 15 percent improvement in fuel consumption and CO2 when compared to other engines.
“The LEAP engine has about 5 or 6 percent by weight of ceramic matrix composite (CMC). CMCs allow engines to run at higher temp and thus at higher efficiency. They are also lighter weight than the metals they are replacing,” said CEO Dr. Shay Harrison, who joined the company in 2012. “CMCs require fibers as part of the product. What we are offering as commercial products are materials that go into these types of composites that will replace metals in very high temperature applications or very chemically aggressive applications.”

By Christine Graf
Commercial electrical contractor T&J Electrical Associates has moved to a newly-constructed, 15,000-square-foot headquarters in Clifton Park.
The $2.2 million building is located at 419 Route 146. T&J Electrical was started by brothers Tony and Joe Sestito, out of Tony’s home, in 1977.
During the early years of the business, T&J Electrical performed residential and small-scale commercial work. Over time, the company focus shifted toward large commercial jobs. The company has grown to 80 employees and no longer performs residential work. Tony retired from the business several years ago.
“The scale of jobs they were taking on became larger and larger and they became a union contractor,” said Nick Sestito, son of Joe Sestito, who joined the family business in 2009. He worked his way up to partner and now manages the company along with his father, who is semi-retired.
“They performed a lot of retail work for companies like CVS, Price Chopper, and Shop Rite. Forty years later, we still have a lot of those customers,” he said.
Sestito has spent the last several years growing the company’s electrical lighting and maintenance division which represents approximately 25 percent of its revenue. The remaining 75 percent is generated by the new construction and remodeling division.
“When I came into the office in 2015 with the intent to grow that, we had one service van on the road,” he said. “We now have a fleet of over 20 and we cover the entire northeast. We repair anything electrical or lighting related.”

By Christine Graf
Albany-based Noble Gas Solutions is planning to open a third location at 15 Third St. in South Glens Falls.
The wholesale distributor of gasses and welding supplies also has a location in Kingston. Noble Gas was founded in 1940 as Albany Welding Supply Co. and owner J. David Mahoney worked there for 10 years before purchasing the business in 1986.
Approximately 60 percent of the company’s sales are generated from the gas arm of the business, he said. Noble Gas sells medical, specialty, industrial, and consumer gasses as well as gas and cryogenic packaging. Their packaging product line includes cylinders, tanks, manifolds, and liquid cryogenic dewars.
“We started by getting into selling specialty gasses for universities and for laboratories, and it just evolved. We sell so many different gasses. We sell helium to florists, gasses to veterinary clinics and pharmaceuticals. It’s very diverse,” said Mahoney.
Noble Gas also carries a full line of welding, metalworking, soldering, brazing, and fume elimination supplies.
The company sells, rents and repairs welding machines.

Chowderfest is not going away, it is just going to look a little different this year, organizers announced.
For the safety of everyone, Discover Saratoga has altered the highly anticipated annual event for 2021, introducing Saratoga Chowder Tour.
The group has developed a week-long event, running from Saturday, Jan. 30, through Saturday, Feb. 6, where patrons can get a cup or bowl of chowder at participating Saratoga County restaurants and vote for their favorite online.
Participants businesses will also have pints and quarts of chowder to-go.
“Due to COVID-19, we had to reimagine Chowderfest this year,” said Discover Saratoga President Darryl Leggieri. “To ensure the safety of everyone, Saratoga Chowder Tour will be a social distance-friendly event spanning over a week. There will be no crowds, no vendors serving samples outside, no shuttle service this year, and no blocked off streets, but there will still be lots of delicious chowder to enjoy inside our local restaurants or to-go.”
Saratoga Chowder Tour will allow customers to sample chowder at multiple restaurants throughout the week, avoiding overcrowding of restricted space. They can safely vote online in the comfort of their homes.

By Christine Graf
Queensbury-based electrical contractor Gross Electric reported record breaking sales of $65 million in 2020.
The company was founded in 1994 by Joseph Gross. He started the business out of his garage and had 40 employees by the end of his first year. Today, Gross Electric has 300 employees and satellite offices in Virginia and Florida. The company performs work along the entire East Coast and as far north as the Canadian border.
“I cut my teeth in the paper industry,” said Gross, noting that Finch Pruyn was his first major customer. “The paper industry was very good to us, but unfortunately, that industry has faded.”
Gross Electric was able to find new opportunities in the cement industry and has performed work at Glens Falls Cement and Lafarge Ravena Cement Plant. The company also works in the food processing industry, and customers have included Beech-Nut Nutrition Company in Amsterdam. Their biggest break came about five years ago when they were hired to do the electrical work for the Global Foundries administrative offices in Malta.
“After that, we earned their trust and picked up quite a lot of work at Global Foundries,” said Gross. “With them giving us the opportunity, that opened up other opportunities in the industry.”

By Jill Nagy
“We’re breathing in a lot of stuff in the air that we cannot see,” said Patrick Schmidt, vice president of sales at Air Pro Solutions, a new business selling, installing and servicing air filtration systems.
When he and other member of his sales staff visit a potential customer, they bring along an air quality meter that can measure that “stuff in the air” and then show it disappearing as one of the company’s Air Box filters goes to work.
Air Pro, located at 229 Washington St. in Saratoga Springs, services an area including Saratoga and Albany counties, the Glens Falls area and the North Country. They are independent dealers for Air Box units manufactured in the Carolinas. Currently, the company employs three sales people and two service people.
When businesses and other institutions prepare to reopen, they usually begin by stocking masks, plastic shields, hand sanitizers, antiseptic wipes and similar equipment.
“The air piece of it,” he said, “is the last one usually” and arguably the most important.
Air Pro sells portable, stand-alone units about the size of a dehumidifier. There is also a model in a cabinet that fits into the wall.
They filter in three stages: an activated carbon filter removes odors; an anti-microbial filter removes the larger particles; the final filter, a HEPA (high efficiency particulate air) filter, can remove particles as small as viruses, including COVID viruses. The first two filters have to be replaced every six months. The HEPA filter is good for three years.